Legal Commentary

Cheney and Kadamus: When Should Hunting Accidents Be Prosecuted As Crimes?

By TChris

Dick Cheney and Kevin Kadamus both understood that safe hunters never shoot until they can see and identify their targets. Cheney nonetheless shot his friend, Harry Whittington, who soon proclaimed that the shooting was accidental and, upon his discharge from the hospital, expressed his sorrow "for everything Vice President Cheney and his family have had to deal with." No criminal charges were filed against Cheney. Kadamus shot his 17 year old son, Jacob, who died. That shooting was clearly accidental, but Kadamus has been charged with manslaughter. Why?

The game warden who arrived in time to watch Jacob die in his father's arms insists that hunters do not shoot other hunters by accident.

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"There's three distinct actions that have to take place: You have to aim the firearm, take the safety off and you have to pull the trigger. None of those actions are ever accidental. The simplest way to avoid an accident is to identify your target. I've never seen a 17-year-old boy who looks anything like a turkey," he said.

The warden has probably never seen an 80 year old man who looks like a quail, either, but no prosecutor had the gumption to claim that Cheney's shooting of Whittington wasn't accidental.

Conflating the intentional act of shooting with the accidental act of shooting a person makes the decision to charge Kadamus a no-brainer, but the question is whether deliberate actions that lead to unintended consequences can or should be regarded as "accidental" rather than "criminal." That question isn't always easy to answer. Consider the driver who runs over a small child who darts into traffic. The driver started the car, put it in gear, and steered it down the road. None of those actions were accidental; by the warden's logic, striking the child shouldn't be regarded as an accident.

Cheney and Kadamus, of course, occupy a different position than our hypothetical driver, who was driving carefully but nonetheless was in an accident that was, as a practical matter, unavoidable. Cheney and Kadamus were both careless and arguably reckless. The manslaughter charge against Kadamus does not require proof of an intent to kill, and causing an accidental death or injury by conduct that is reckless (or at least extremely negligent) is generally punishable.

The fundamental question here isn't so much a legal question as a policy question. Assuming that Kadamus was arguably reckless when he shot his son, does it make sense to prosecute him? Is there a conceivable punishment that the state can inflict on Kadamus that is worse than the loss of his son?

A prosecutor might argue that charging Kadamus will deter other hunters from acting recklessly. That seems a stretch. What hunter will place the risk of going to prison above the risk of killing a child? A hunter who isn't deterred from reckless behavior by the knowledge that his actions might kill another member of the hunting party isn't likely to be deterred by the threat of a criminal prosecution.

Kadamus will spend the rest of his life regretting the few seconds of carelessness that caused his son's death. As a matter of policy, piling a criminal punishment on top of the grief Kadamus already feels is a heartless decision. It's particularly mean-spirited to prosecute someone like Kadamus when someone like Cheney gets a pass for conduct that may have been much more egregious (the decision to start drinking after the shooting but before talking to the police raises a suspicion that Cheney, fearing his blood would be tested, wanted to negate the significance of the test result), even if the ultimate outcome was less tragic.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 23, 2009 (boomark / email).